cormack12
Gold Member
I'm just off the first planet last night, and I've spent a few hours trying difficulties and really testing the different elements so here's a quick rundown that might help people.
Overall rating: For me personally, it's probably just behind Control. Depending on how highly you rate Control I guess. I actually think Control is round an 8.5 so this no higher than an 8 but leaning more towards 7.5 from my point of view (currently).
Graphics: Playing on PS4 Pro and the game is a bit inconsistent. It seems to suffer from what I call 'mod skate', where slow moving/walking makes it look like you're hovering above the floor and ice skating across it. Some of the assets like big thin plants have massive clear boundary boxes that you can't walk through which is annoying as well. I've turned everything off except motion blur and the game has solid environments. The creature design fits the world I think and the models are simple yet believable and well done. Performance wise, effects seems to give random stutters now and again (like fog drifting over water). Nothing significant as of yet but noticeable when just walking/traversing one place to another. Performance is probably better overall than Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but below in terms of pure visuals.
Combat and controls: Not a fan of the angled run, like a comic book and it makes the turning circle weird when you move the camera. I'm not sure where the Souls comparisons come from. Yes, you can lock onto enemies and strafe round them and it's melee based but that's about it. It's possible to pretty much one hit kill most enemies. Timed parry will deflect and kill laser shooters, and timed parry on enemies will give you a finisher opportunity. Glowing attacks have to be evaded and not blocked/parried.
First planet and small enemies are no trouble really to dispatch. When you get slightly larger enemies is where the camera turns to shit for me. There are these toad/newt crosses that are probably scaled to the size of a manatee. One of their attacks is some sort of belly flop jump and if you're close and locked on, the camera just completely fucks up and takes ages (second or so) to reset. If you don't use lock on it's too easy to lose sight and then get hit cheaply off screen and I think that goes back to the turning circle/camera issue earlier. It's manageable but it does get frustrating when one hit pretty much does you in on the highest difficulty. Blocking is actually useful though, parrying does have a decent enough window to use as well. Force powers I haven't really unlocked yet and they've mostly been to get through the environment by stopping fan blades or to slow enemies as that's the first ability.
Difficulty and bonfires: The bonfire system I really like except the lack of fast travel. When you unlock a bonfire, you get three options. Level, Rest or Leave. Level is self explanatory - the rest mechanic is really good and if we get more souls game, I'd like them to do the same. So if you 'choose' to rest your health gets charged and your stim paks get replenished. The cost is that all enemies respawn. So it's possible to go and level up at a bonfire but choose whether to respawn mobs or not which I think is cool.
So I started on second to top difficulty, then bumped it up. There isn't a difficulty related trophy I don't think, and each difficulty has a little graphic that shows you how each level differs. The biggest things are the parry window gets smaller and the incoming damage goes up. First thing is that like the annoyance of Souls and Bloodborne, if the difficulty and multiple deaths are what the game is centred round, then you need to get back in the action quick (see Nioh). I agree with
ColonialRaptor
, the load time is too long and given the issues I'll outline below, it feels unearned as a lot of deaths feel 'cheap' as mentioned. This probably isn't an issue on decent PC's to be fair, maybe the X1X is also better (someone would have to weigh in).
In terms of deaths so far. A few from the environment, not sure why they chose to have an 'attach' button to surfaces, but sometimes it's been a bit hit and miss especially on dropping or jumping across as the animations feel a bit too 'big' for smaller adjustments. The enemies on the higher difficulties just have armour upped and damage upped. Also, when you take a hit and get back up, there's a weird recovery stagger/jank that still leaves you exposed after getting up. It feels like a mini stunlock and if a snapping enemy is around, it can get an extra hit in which feels very cheap after just getting knocked down and back up. General mobs are easy, you don't even need to strafe circle, just hit R1 to slow them, run round them and attack from the back so it's even easier than souls in that respect. It's not so much placement or difficulty of mobs, it's the janky movement and weird collision that is getting my health eaten up at the moment.
If you're killed the enemy takes all your XP since your last level up, and you get the opportunity to win it back if you go kill it right away. The jump between second highest and highest difficulty feels disparate. As though on the final difficulty they just said let's max every disadvantage to the player and just let them get on with it, and not really balance that out properly.
Summary: I think it's taken a lot of systems and improvements from lots of games and used them here, but the implementations are not best in class. They're fairly solid though and enough to make the game enjoyable on most difficulties which will please most people.
In summary - for me - I felt more pure fun and synergy with Control this year so far, and to me it feels more like the abstraction between Alexios/Kassandra being assassins or mercenaries as opposed to feeling like a pure Jedi in something like TFU. That might change with some abilities later on but I doubt it's that type of game. Having said that, it's still a solid entry and the best SW game we've had in ages so thumbe up and I'm gonna try get through it later
If you're on the fence, I would feel bad trying to convince you that this is a must play title now. If you have stuff to play and you're enjoying it then it's no hardship to wait, if you're really desperate, love SW and have nothing to play I don't think you'll feel shortchanged if you do choose to buy it but just don't expect it to exceed expectations.
Overall rating: For me personally, it's probably just behind Control. Depending on how highly you rate Control I guess. I actually think Control is round an 8.5 so this no higher than an 8 but leaning more towards 7.5 from my point of view (currently).
Graphics: Playing on PS4 Pro and the game is a bit inconsistent. It seems to suffer from what I call 'mod skate', where slow moving/walking makes it look like you're hovering above the floor and ice skating across it. Some of the assets like big thin plants have massive clear boundary boxes that you can't walk through which is annoying as well. I've turned everything off except motion blur and the game has solid environments. The creature design fits the world I think and the models are simple yet believable and well done. Performance wise, effects seems to give random stutters now and again (like fog drifting over water). Nothing significant as of yet but noticeable when just walking/traversing one place to another. Performance is probably better overall than Shadow of the Tomb Raider, but below in terms of pure visuals.
Combat and controls: Not a fan of the angled run, like a comic book and it makes the turning circle weird when you move the camera. I'm not sure where the Souls comparisons come from. Yes, you can lock onto enemies and strafe round them and it's melee based but that's about it. It's possible to pretty much one hit kill most enemies. Timed parry will deflect and kill laser shooters, and timed parry on enemies will give you a finisher opportunity. Glowing attacks have to be evaded and not blocked/parried.
First planet and small enemies are no trouble really to dispatch. When you get slightly larger enemies is where the camera turns to shit for me. There are these toad/newt crosses that are probably scaled to the size of a manatee. One of their attacks is some sort of belly flop jump and if you're close and locked on, the camera just completely fucks up and takes ages (second or so) to reset. If you don't use lock on it's too easy to lose sight and then get hit cheaply off screen and I think that goes back to the turning circle/camera issue earlier. It's manageable but it does get frustrating when one hit pretty much does you in on the highest difficulty. Blocking is actually useful though, parrying does have a decent enough window to use as well. Force powers I haven't really unlocked yet and they've mostly been to get through the environment by stopping fan blades or to slow enemies as that's the first ability.
Difficulty and bonfires: The bonfire system I really like except the lack of fast travel. When you unlock a bonfire, you get three options. Level, Rest or Leave. Level is self explanatory - the rest mechanic is really good and if we get more souls game, I'd like them to do the same. So if you 'choose' to rest your health gets charged and your stim paks get replenished. The cost is that all enemies respawn. So it's possible to go and level up at a bonfire but choose whether to respawn mobs or not which I think is cool.
So I started on second to top difficulty, then bumped it up. There isn't a difficulty related trophy I don't think, and each difficulty has a little graphic that shows you how each level differs. The biggest things are the parry window gets smaller and the incoming damage goes up. First thing is that like the annoyance of Souls and Bloodborne, if the difficulty and multiple deaths are what the game is centred round, then you need to get back in the action quick (see Nioh). I agree with
ColonialRaptor
, the load time is too long and given the issues I'll outline below, it feels unearned as a lot of deaths feel 'cheap' as mentioned. This probably isn't an issue on decent PC's to be fair, maybe the X1X is also better (someone would have to weigh in).In terms of deaths so far. A few from the environment, not sure why they chose to have an 'attach' button to surfaces, but sometimes it's been a bit hit and miss especially on dropping or jumping across as the animations feel a bit too 'big' for smaller adjustments. The enemies on the higher difficulties just have armour upped and damage upped. Also, when you take a hit and get back up, there's a weird recovery stagger/jank that still leaves you exposed after getting up. It feels like a mini stunlock and if a snapping enemy is around, it can get an extra hit in which feels very cheap after just getting knocked down and back up. General mobs are easy, you don't even need to strafe circle, just hit R1 to slow them, run round them and attack from the back so it's even easier than souls in that respect. It's not so much placement or difficulty of mobs, it's the janky movement and weird collision that is getting my health eaten up at the moment.
If you're killed the enemy takes all your XP since your last level up, and you get the opportunity to win it back if you go kill it right away. The jump between second highest and highest difficulty feels disparate. As though on the final difficulty they just said let's max every disadvantage to the player and just let them get on with it, and not really balance that out properly.
Summary: I think it's taken a lot of systems and improvements from lots of games and used them here, but the implementations are not best in class. They're fairly solid though and enough to make the game enjoyable on most difficulties which will please most people.
In summary - for me - I felt more pure fun and synergy with Control this year so far, and to me it feels more like the abstraction between Alexios/Kassandra being assassins or mercenaries as opposed to feeling like a pure Jedi in something like TFU. That might change with some abilities later on but I doubt it's that type of game. Having said that, it's still a solid entry and the best SW game we've had in ages so thumbe up and I'm gonna try get through it later
If you're on the fence, I would feel bad trying to convince you that this is a must play title now. If you have stuff to play and you're enjoying it then it's no hardship to wait, if you're really desperate, love SW and have nothing to play I don't think you'll feel shortchanged if you do choose to buy it but just don't expect it to exceed expectations.
and all.
